Ahmed Zaki Yamani

Ahmed Zaki Yamani (30 June 1930-) was Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resourecs of Saudi Arabia from 9 March 1962 to 5 October 1986, succeeding Abdullah Tariki and preceding Hisham Nazer. He was nearly killed in the OPEC siege on the orders of Ba'athist Iraq, but he was later released in Algeria by Carlos the Jackal when Libya refused to let the hijackers land their plane there.

Biography
Ahmed Zaki Yamani was born on 30 June 1930 in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and he had degrees from New York University School of Law, Harvard Law School, and the University of Exeter, and in 1958 he became an adviser to the government of Saudi Arabia. In 1962, he became oil minister, and in 1973 he spurred OPEC to quadruple the price of oil to form an embargo against the United States in response to their support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War that same year. In December 1975, Yamani and other OPEC ministers were taken hostage by the Arm of the Arab Revolution in Vienna, Austria in response to Saudi Arabia's support of Kurdish rebels in Ba'athist Iraq; Iraq wanted Yamani and Iranian delegate Jamshid Amouzegar to be murdered to send a message to the Saudis. However, the Libyan delegate to the conference was killed by the terrorist leader Carlos the Jackal when he tried to attack him, leading to Muammar Gaddafi refusing to give sanctuary to the terrorists. Yamani and Amouzegar were released in Algiers, Algeria after the hijackers were unable to make it to Baghdad to kill the hostages, and Yamani resumed his role as oil minister. In 1986, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia dismissed him due to the House of Saud's insistence on controlling its own oil policies, and he founded the Center for Global Energy Studies in 1990 as a market analysis group.